This invention relates to analog-to-digital (“A/D”) signal conversion in wideband digital communication. Specifically, the invention relates to improving the dynamic range of A/D converters (“ADCs”).
Currently, in many areas of high-speed digital communication, analog signals are processed and converted into digital data by being downconverted, filtered, and amplified to a particular analog baseband frequency prior to A/D conversion. As a result, such signals are confined to certain frequency boundaries and therefore make ADCs with uniform quantization (i.e., equal granularity or step sizes between increments) an acceptable solution for such applications.
However, the recent advent of digital cable television and cellular phone technologies such as CDMA (Carrier Division Multiple Access) has brought about an increase in the use of wideband digital signals. These signals, which may typically be approximated by a Gaussian probability distribution function, are generally small in amplitude with extremely large amplitude spikes. As a result, the dynamic range of the previous uniform ADCs are no longer adequate, since they would result in either the sacrificing of small-scale resolution or else would clip the large-amplitude signals due to their limited range.
It would therefore be desirable to design an ADC with non-uniform granularity for wideband signals that require a large dynamic range. It would further be desirable to design an ADC with non-uniform granularity, without sacrificing small-scale resolution or clipping the large amplitude signal components. Finally, it would be desirable to design an ADC with non-uniform granularity and without a costly increase in the amount of hardware required to implement the ADC.